Georgetown drainage pumps fully operational – Agri Minister

The Hydromet Department has issued an advisory predicting instances of high-intensity rainfall over the next three or four days, and Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha on Friday conducted a site visit to two of the recently acquired drainage pumps in Georgetown to ensure the structures are functioning properly.
One of the pumps is located at Sussex Street and the other is at Ruimveldt.
A Department of Public Information report stated that Mustapha said a visit to the pumps was necessary. He said it was important to assess the city’s drainage structures ahead of the forecasted rainy weekend, given that many areas in Georgetown are prone to flooding.
“…from the NDIA, we’ve boosted our drainage capacity with three additional pumps through the Indian Line of Credit. We were able to purchase 12 additional pumps at a cost of US$3.5 million. One of these hydro-flow pumps costs US$500,000, and we have three of those in Georgetown to boost the city’s drainage capacity. One of these pumps is capable of draining 35,520 gallons of water per minute. With such a high drainage capacity, I’m hoping we can avoid the kind of flooding that we experienced over the last few months.
“The City’s Engineer has also assured me that he has enough human resources to manage these structures; to not only ensure they remain operable, but operate on a timely basis, because we do not want to have a repeat of what took place two weeks ago,” Mustapha said.

Precautions
Further, given the inclement weather, he urged rice farmers to take precautions when traversing the dams to transport their paddy from the fields.
“We are currently in the harvesting season, with about 50 per cent of the rice fields completed. Ahead of the harvesting period, the (Agriculture) Ministry would’ve expended millions of dollars to rehabilitate a number of dams so that farmers could transport their paddy out of the fields. Due to the inclement weather, many of those dams are once again becoming impassable.
“I want to assure our farmers that we will continue to do maintenance of these dams; but, at the same time, I want to appeal to the farmers to use the dams in a responsible manner, so that everyone would have a chance to bring out their produce,” he said.
Additionally, the Minister said that, based on the information he has been receiving from the Guyana Rice Development Board, he is expecting a bumper crop this season.
“We’ve seen an increase in our quota to Brazil from 10,000 tonnes to 34,000 tonnes of rice. We also have new markets in Hungary and Latvia, so, generally, our overall export quota will be increasing and, at the same time, we’ll see an increase in production this crop. This is why we are working to put things in place, so that we can avoid, or at least minimise, farmers’ losses and also avoid flooding in residential areas,” Minister Mustapha said.
He also said he would be conducting other site visits to pumps along the coast over the next few days.
The National Drainage and Irrigation Authority’s Chief Executive Officer Fredrick Flatts, Chairman of the Board Lionel Wordsworth, and other NDIA officials also attended the exercise.